


Time Does Not Reveal

by pipisafoat



Series: No Secrets [1]
Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Chronic Illness, Disability, Disabled Character, Epilepsy, Gen, Seizures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 07:57:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipisafoat/pseuds/pipisafoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no answer for a long moment. He's just considering telling him everything - isn't that what best friends are supposed to do? - when his car door shuts gently. He winces a bit, but Ted climbs back into the driver's seat without comment and restarts the car. The silence lasts until they pull back onto the road, but it's still not the question he's expecting. </p><p>"You still want to get that massage?"</p><p>He considers for a minute. "No."</p><p> </p><p>Preseries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Does Not Reveal

**Author's Note:**

> "There are no secrets that time does not reveal." --Jean Rancine

Barney wakes up in the hospital with Dr. Roberts standing over him. "Long time, no see," he tries, but the older man doesn't look impressed. 

"Not long enough."

He shrugs. "Hey, at least someone brought me in this time."

"A hysterical woman who seemed convinced your name was Arnie Linson." The doctor rolls his eyes as he sits in the only chair in the room. "I'd offer you the choice-"

"But we both know I'd rather stay here than go anywhere with a bimbo. Any chance you'll tell her I died?"

Roberts doesn't bother to answer, just sits back and watches Barney until his eyes slide shut despite his best efforts. 

* * *

The next time it happens, he finds himself on a strange floor with a threadbare blanket over him. There's a bimbo across the room from him, looking terrified, and all he wants to do is scream at her that this is _not_  how first aid is done. Luckily for her, the exhaustion is a bit ahead of schedule, but he musters up a scathing look at least. 

"Leave her alone," someone says, and Barney briefly considers turning his head to see who it is, but he's just too tired. A sharp slap echoes in the room as soon as his eyes close, though. 

"Bastard," Barney accuses weakly. 

"That's why you like me," the voice answers, and oh, there's only one person who would ever be that much of a jerk after he's had a seizure in front of them. 

"I didn't know you had a daughter," he slurs out with great effort, and Roberts laughs. 

"Amy's my neighbor."

Barney considers this briefly. It's definitely a bad idea to sleep with your neurologist's daughter, but he's not sure why the man is here if she's just a neighbor. Maybe he was in some kind of kinky threesome and he should actually be grateful to his fucked up brain for losing the memory. It would be the first time his seizures were helpful, so he kind of wants to believe it just for that, but the thought of Roberts having sex...well, he'd like to think he will be too, at that age, and he'll totally be hot enough to get the younger women, but unexpected threesomes are actually never hot. 

"Whatever you're thinking is probably wrong," Roberts says. 

"I'm tired," Barney says, and he'll never admit how much like a whine it sounds. "I'm allowed to think wrong. It's a miracle I'm thinking at all right now." He closes his eyes again, but there's no slap, so he relaxes steadily. 

He wakes up hours later to the smell of pancakes and follows his nose into a strange kitchen, wrapped tightly in the same threadbare blanket. It's Roberts, not the girl from earlier, and he leans hesitantly in the doorway. 

"How much do you remember?" the man asks, and Barney takes it as an invitation to drop into one of the chairs at the absurdly large table. 

"Bar, wingman, girl, leaving," he summarizes. "No sex, so either the sex or the ... thing ... was particularly bad."

"Neither. You never even got in her apartment. Went down right outside my door. Good timing, really. If I had to choose one patient to watch having a grand mal, it'd be you: annual winner of my Least Likely To Communicate Helpful Information award." A plate with two pancakes appears in front of Barney, and a stern look follows. "Eat."

He takes one bite, then sets down his fork. "It happened at night?"

"Patterns can change, Barney. How many times have I told you that?"

"It's not a change," he says quickly. "Just an anomaly."

Roberts doesn't answer, just plunks his own plate on the table and digs in. "Eat," he repeats, and they finish their meal in silence.

"Hey, I know where you live now," Barney says as they make their way out to meet the cab. 

Roberts sighs. "Don't tell anyone and don't show up here drunk."

"I would never!"

A steady gaze meets that proclamation.

"I won't, okay? Not unless its an emergency."

"I won't be your safety net, Barney. Either tell your wingman what's going on or start going to your mother."

He nods, but he's pretty sure Roberts gets that he's only saying he heard the advice, not promising to take it.

* * *

He tells Dwayne it's for getting sex tapes - and yeah, he's _definitely_  going to watch those, so it's not even a lie - but he starts reviewing the recordings every morning, rationalizing away several dozen small nighttime seizures until he finally gives in and admits that his patterns have changed. What's worse is seeing how his bimbos react when his brain stutters. Only half of them call 911, and only half of _those_ stay with him until the ambulance gets there. Some of them even hit him while it's happening, like that's going to stop it.

"You have a reputation," Roberts points out when Barney complains. "One that you deliberately cultivate, to some extent. How faking a seizure would help you get laid, I don't know. But I can understand their reaction."

Barney glares balefully at him. "You don't kick a man while he's down," he says, deciding not to explain how literally he means that. There are some things even doctors don't need to know.

But it's enough to convince him to start the medication roulette again. 

* * *

"Dude, what's up with you lately?"

Barney snaps his attention back to Dwayne. "What?"

"I hate to say this, but you're being a shitty wingman. I should have guessed something was up when you offered me all the chicks."

Barney shrugs. He's tapering down off this med starting in the morning, but he probably won't get his sex drive back until the stupid drug is completely out of his system. He doesn't even see hotness right now, and that's just weird. Even when he's exhausted or busy or postictal, he can at least tell if someone's hot. "Tired," he says eventually. "Work. Family. You know."

Dwayne looks at him for a minute, then shrugs. "Go home. Get some sleep. I think I'll be better off without you."

He can't really fault that thinking, but going home is like admitting defeat. He sits up straighter, opens his mouth to promise better wingman services, and has to stop in his tracks as a simple partial hits him. He has a feeling it won't stop there, either. Awesome. The side effects suck, and the fucking med doesn't even work. "See you," he says, trudging towards the door. It's not until he gets home that he realizes all the condoms they picked up before the bar are in his coat. Oh well. Dwayne's a big boy.  

(Nine months later, their bro-ship was over, and Daddy Dwayne didn't have any time for the Barnacle. He never hates his malfunctioning brain as much as he does when it costs him a friend. And yeah, he hadn't bothered to get close to Dwayne, not after everyone else, and it was only indirectly due to the epilepsy and actually much more a function of Dwayne being an idiot, but still. It sucked.)

* * *

"We met at the urinal," Facial Hair explains to his friends - to his other friends, that is, because Barney fully intends to haunt this bar until he makes this man his new best friend and wingman.

"There's a story to tell the future kids," the big guy says, apparently unconcerned. 

"Shut up, Marshall. The kids don't need to know how I meet every person."

Marshall shrugs and drains his beer. "Anyone else need another?"

"I'll get it," Barney offers. "What's everybody drinking?"

The bar isn't actually that far away from the table with his new friend - friends? - so he can hear them try to figure out if they can trust any drinks he brings them. He tells the bartender to send the drinks with a waitress, to set them at ease, and stays for a moment longer than necessary to continue listening in. The chick is the only one wondering why he'd buy for three strangers, and her theories are downright disturbing. He makes a mental note to leave first and not chance even the slightest hint of following them home. 

He wonders, the next day, if he should have been more insistent about exchanging numbers or making plans, but they're in the same booth at the same bar. Nobody questions it when he gets the waitress to bring them another round on his tab, and they actually bother to introduce themselves this time.

* * *

He calls Roberts from the cab, hands his phone to the driver as the aura shifts into something more complex. It's a blur from there: he's glad, for once, that he doesn't remember all of his seizures, but Roberts hauls an exhausted, postictal Barney out of a cab and into his own apartment for the night.

"I can't keep doing this," he says in the morning. "You've got to tell your friends, Barney."

"I'm not sure they're those kinds of friends," Barney answers through his pancakes. That's one perk of staying on his doctor's couch that he's not entirely willing to give up. Nobody does delivery pancakes, even in New York. 

"Don't know until you try."

* * *

"Look, Barney, I know I promised to play laser tag with you tonight, but-"

"Forget it," Barney says. "I'm not going tonight anyway. Another time."

Ted looks at him kind of funny. "You're not playing laser tag? Are you sick or something?"

He didn't get enough sleep this week to go anywhere near flashing lights, but ... "Tonight, the bimbos of New York need Barney Stinson - or perhaps a stunningly attractive Broadway singer - more than little kids need their asses lasered. To the bar!"

Ted rolls his eyes, but they go to the bar, and they each go home with a dumb blond and no risk of photogenic seizures. 

* * *

"Dude, this isn't..."

Ted grins at him as he reaches over and unfastens Barney's seatbelt. "I know."

"What are you doing? You're not planning to leave me in a strange parking lot, are you?"

Ted opens his own door and gets out instead of answering. He walks around the car, opens Barney's door, and tugs on his arm. 

"I am not getting out of this car."

"You're just changing seats."

Barney looks around the lot. It's pretty much deserted, but he reminds himself that Ted isn't a serial killer or anything. "Is there a reason you want me in the back seat?"

"Not the back seat."

No. No, no, no. Barney clicks his seatbelt back over his lap. "Stop fucking around and get back in the car. If you weren't going to take me to my massage, you could have just said so."

"Oh, come on." Ted leans over into the car and reaches for Barney's belt. Barney slaps at his hand. "I'm not fucking with you. You can't drive; I'm going to teach you."

Barney can feel his face twisting up with a mess of emotions he doesn't even understand, but he suspects that Emotionally Overendowed Ted has managed to figure out something. He suddenly has a lot more personal space, and his seatbelt isn't in danger of being removed anymore.

"If you don't want to learn, that's okay," Ted says, but Barney can't help thinking about all those years he wanted to learn, tried to learn a couple times only to have it taken away from him just before he managed to really get it. He'd always wanted to drive. He just...he can't. 

"I can't," he chokes out, and hell, he hates the way he sounds. He hates the way Ted sets a tentative hand on his knee when he speaks. 

"I've done this before," Ted tells him quietly. "You're way smarter and not nearly as distractible as the teenage girl I babysat a couple years ago. You can do this, alright?"

Barney shakes his head, feeling the tension rise in his throat. "It's not...I know I could...I can't do this, Ted. Not ever. Not me."

"Why not?"

He knew this was going to happen sooner or later, but he'd really been hoping for later, and for his own terms. And yeah, he's lucky Ted and his friends haven't found out by way of calling an ambulance, but of all the scenarios he's ever planned out explanations for, this never even entered his mind. 

"Barney?"

He looks over at Ted. "It's a long story."

"Whether or not you're okay is a long story?"

He swears and drops his head back against the seat. "Missed that question."

"You missed a few things there."

"That, uh, happens sometimes."

Ted actually laughs at that. "God, Barney, it happens nearly every night. You zoning out? Is nothing new."

"Every night?" He closes his eyes and sighs. "I'm going to need you to start keeping track of that. Dates and times."

There's no answer for a long moment. He's just considering telling him everything - isn't that what best friends are supposed to do? - when his car door shuts gently. He winces a bit, but Ted climbs back into the driver's seat without comment and restarts the car. The silence lasts until they pull back onto the road, but it's still not the question he's expecting. 

"You still want to get that massage?"

He considers for a minute. "No."

* * *

It's Lily who manages to break the silence, four days later. He considers not answering his phone, but that doesn't seem fair to her or to him. "Go for Barney," he says, forcing as much cheer as he can into his voice. 

"If Ted did something to you, he doesn't know what it was, so this whole silent treatment plan isn't going to work."

"Hi, Lily. I'm busy but doing well; how are you?"

He can hear her roll her eyes. "Hi, Barney. Are you really busy or mad?"

"Neither," he answers without even thinking. "And since when do you call me, anyway?"

Lily laughs. "Since Ted's acting like too much of a little bitch to deal with his own issues."

" _His_..." Barney winces. "It's not ... He's not ... I'll come by the apartment when I'm done at work tonight. Don't let them go to the bar."

There's a short silence, then Lily makes this thoughtful kind of noise. "Alright, I'll keep them sober and home. You want me to clear out?"

He frowns. "Sober doesn't matter, and what?"

"I'm just saying, whatever's going on, you sound like it's a big deal. If you want it to stay between you guys, I promise I won't-"

"I want you there," he blurts out in a rush. "And, uh, keep me there until I've said it."

* * *

It starts with some awkward silence, moves on to even more awkward half-sentences, and ends up around a desperate look at Ted. "I don't know what you're trying to say," Ted answers. "All I know is you can't drive."

It's a sign of how distressed Barney must look - or of Lily's expert meddling - that all he gets from Marshall is a steady gaze at this revelation. "Yeah," he confirms. "Because of ... a medical thing."

"Did you ever drive?" Marshall asks, as Lily gasps and inquires about his current health. 

"Never could for long enough to learn," he replies, sidestepping Lily for now. "And that's not going to change, so..."

"No repeats," Ted assures him. 

Marshall's still looking at him thoughtfully. "Look, if you don't want to say anything more than that, it's fine."

"I don't _ever_ want to say _anything_ ," Barney grits out, closing his eyes as he leans on Ted's desk. "I don't want it to change anything, and don't you _dare_ say it won't, because it always does. But at least one person needs to know, and you're all pathologically incapable of keeping secrets from each other, so here we are."

But he can't seem to get out anything else after that. He knows he's not missing time, because he's staring at the clock on Ted's desk, but the room is so quiet and stiflingly full of concern that he breaks. Spins on his heel and practically flings himself at the door, only to be brought up short by Lily's hand in his chest, her back to the door. 

"Don't bolt until you say it," she reminds him, and Barney sags even as he waves a dismissive hand at Marshall's remonstrations. 

"I told her to do it," he explains, and the silence falls again. 

Marshall is the one who breaks it, this time. "I have an aunt with epilepsy," he says quietly. "So if that's it, I'm not going to pretend I know everything or that yours is the same as hers, but I have a bit of experience at least."

"Simple partial, t-lobe focused, several times a day," Barney says all in one breath. "Absence, apparently every day. Complex partial, couple times a week. Grand mal, a few times a year, but none since I last changed meds." He pushes Lily aside, yanks the door open and runs, doesn't look back, doesn't even shut it behind him.

* * *

That night, Dr. Roberts prods him in the sternum and congratulates him for telling someone. He thinks vaguely that he'd be happier about the kudos if the telling hadn't stressed him straight into a euphoric seizure in the back of a taxi. Not his idea of fun to be carried into a hospital by a frantic cabbie. 

He does admit to himself that its kind of nice to have someone meet him when he checks out the next day, though. Ted takes care of the paperwork while Barney gets out of the stupid hospital gown, and the awesome bro even puts on some porn when he drops Barney on his couch. 

"I've got to go back to work, but Lily gets off soon if you need anything."

Barney pulls the blanket over his head. "You are not allowed to mother hen me unless I'm directly postictal." Besides, he promised to call that cabbie and let him know he was okay. Ranjit offered discount rides for life, and Barney's not dumb enough to pass that by, even if it does mean telling a complete stranger something about his brain. 

"I'm just telling you who to call for the best response time," Ted says. "And I'm pretending I understand whatever you just told me."

"Ask Marshall."

He didn't think any of them would have so much as heard of epilepsy before - and his money would have been on Lily, anyway - but this whole Marshall thing is pretty awesome. Say a few detached, technical words, and let someone else do the real explaining without him freaking out as much. Good deal.

* * *

"Something you should know," Marshall slurs somewhere around midnight. "I don't ... I fucking use Google, alright? So if there's anything we need to know that isn't just going to be sitting in, like, the first result? You should probably tell us."

Barney's relatively sober still, eyeing the girls at the bar with vague distaste. "Read my blog."

"Shockingly, I do. We all do. I'm talking about your brain, though, not your dick."

He rolls his eyes and confiscates Marshall's beer. "Please don't ever talk about my dick. That does not make it happy. And when my dick isn't happy, there's no blog."

Marshall grins and pulls out his cell phone. "Hey, Ted? Barney has a dick. It's ... dick-like. And does things that dicks do."

There's really no answer to that other than to flop face-first on the table. No blog updates tonight. He's pretty sure that if he drinks enough, he can forget anything ever was said.

"M'serious," Marshall mumbles an hour later, nuzzling the top of Barney's head in a way that's weirdly comfortable. "We worry, we care, whatever. And the internet kind of sucks. And it's not like we expect your brain to really be typical, because come on, the sock monkey? So I'm just saying. Tell us something, sometime."

Barney finally gets the door unlocked and prods Marshall inside. "I don't talk about it," he says quietly, steering the bigger man towards his bedroom. "I can't. Never will."

"Then write us a letter, and we'll pretend it never existed, but we'll at least have something to go on, next time."

"We'll see." He dumps Marshall into the empty side of the bed, pulls a trash can over, and shuts the door behind him on the snores already starting. A fucking letter. He's too sober for this.

* * *

_To Whom It May Concern,_

_I, Barnabus Barnaby Barnacle Awesome Stinson, prefer to regain consciousness under a blue and green blanket of the softest material available, especially on such occasions as when pants-removal is deemed necessary. I demand snuggles and cookies and no further mention of anything said, done, or cried. And it would be great to get laid. But not by you, Ted._

He looks up from the only-barely-legible note sheepishly. "I owe you a bottle of rather good rum."

Ted rolls his eyes. "You owe yourself a better set of nicknames to call yourself when drunk. And I don't care what happens; you're never getting your hands on my baby blanket."

"So now's probably a bad time to tell you I totally jerked off in it last night."

"Aaaaand that's when I revoke your rights to sleep on my couch despite level of inebriation."

"Wha-- You--" Barney glares at him. "The blanket was in your room, idiot, and Marshall asked for that letter."

Ted eyes him, clearly unconvinced. "After this, he'll never ask you for anything again."

But Barney writes the goddamn letter, because Marshall spends the next week giving him sad puppy eyes, and it is ridiculous how well Marshall's sad puppy eyes work on him. He stays relatively sober when writing it - at least, he doesn't call himself any of his favorite nicknames, and he's pretty sure it can be read by sober people. He stuffs it in an envelope and labels it _Do Not Open Until Told To, On Pain Of Extreme Pain_. They'll open it when they need to, if not earlier.

* * *

"Sign this."

Ted takes the paper without looking and pulls a pen out of the drawer. "How's this look?"

"Building-shaped?" Barney answers. He's not an architect and never wants to be one, so he considers it fair to give that sort of answer to that sort of question. 

"Helpful." Ted glances at the paper and sets his pen to the appropriate line, then freezes. "What the hell is this?"

"Thought you knew how to read, Theodore."

"You said your mom lives in town."

Barney sighs. "Yeah, and I'll give you her number if you promise to call her only in the case of status or something equally bad. She ... doesn't do this well. I'm not asking you to make life or death decisions alone, okay? But it'd be nice if you could just sign all the paperwork yourself the next time you bust me out of the hospital."

Ted looks at him for a long minute, really looks. "Okay," he finally says, and his signature appears on the necessary line.

He only considers framing a copy for half a minute before realizing that it's not exactly the kind of proof he's eager to show everyone, even if it does mean Ted's officially his best friend.


End file.
